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From the front door, rust-colored leatherette booths and faux-wood Formica tables line the windows in either direction, offering a clear view onto the best and worst of San Francisco at once. Theater patrons pass by here on their way to an evening of high culture, and so do prostitutes, occasionally arguing with their customers. Taxis whiz, tourists walk, poking at maps, and the downtrodden shuffle in search of something they've lost.
But the real action is at the Pinecrest counter, where the regulars mix it up from swiveling, kitchenside seats. The food manager from the Clift Hotel, the shoe shop owner, the rental car agency manager, the proprietor of the Gold Dust Lounge, a woman who works at the Hilton, downtown cops ... they all come to share breakfast or lunch and swap stories over a cup o' joe in a familiar spot. The Pinecrest was Helen's living room, and she loved entertaining guests.
Within the beige walls of the diner, Foundas and Helen, both Greek, created a social magnet for their community. The counter was home to running multinational political debate. One minute it was a new city tax, the next it was the latest idea of Greek Premier Andreas Papandreou. Sometimes the topic was money -- fortunes were made and lost in the Pinecrest stock market -- but whatever the subject, the discussion always occurred underneath the smell of bacon grease, sweet, sticky syrup, brewing coffee, and grilled meat all mixed together.
Helen usually participated in the banter, issuing an opinion, then speeding off to warm up some customer's coffee, and then rushing back again to the cash register to ring up a bill. She was manager, maitre d', waitress, cashier, and bookkeeper, simultaneously. Foundas trusted her and put her in charge during the day. Though Hashem had been there two years longer, he did not read or write English, which, for Foundas, made Helen the more logical choice to be de facto manager. Besides, she was clever. Helen seemed to be on a first-name basis with half of San Francisco and found something to say to the other half, anyway. Big shots got the same treatment as wannabes and nobodies. And Helen always met any attempt at flirtation with the same satirical answer: "I've got a husband at home I can't get rid of. What do I want with you?"
Tourists and conventioneers brought her piles of pins and presents. Helen directed people to the hotels nearby, which directed customers back to the Pinecrest. After he left the Mayor's Office, Art Agnos once sent Nick Retsinas, assistant secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, to the Pinecrest during a visit to San Francisco.
"His father ran a diner like the Pinecrest. First time he came, he says, 'I want a place where I can get a good breakfast like at my father's place,' " Agnos remembers. "So I called Helen and told her, 'Watch out for the Greek boy who's coming in, he's a tall, good-looking guy. He has glasses.'
"Retsinas walked in, and she picked him out right away. Went up and said, 'Hello Mr. Secretary.' Nick called me all excited and said, 'The whole place was waiting for me.' That was Helen."
Nearly everyone knew Hashem, too. At the grill, he was in the center of the downtown universe. There is no privacy in an open kitchen in the middle of a tiny diner. He shared in the jokes and chatted with the regulars, especially women. Hashem loved women.
And so it was that on July 23, an attractive woman sat down at the counter and asked Hashem for poached eggs. Poached eggs are not on the menu; they had proven to take too long for this short-order kitchen. But the woman wanted her eggs poached, and Hashem was ready to oblige -- until Helen intervened. She told Hashem he couldn't make the pretty woman poached eggs unless he was going to put them back on the menu for other customers, too. Foundas' son-in-law, standing at the cash register looking over some paperwork, also weighed in, supporting the no-off-the-menu-orders side of the issue. Like most things here, the discussion unfolded in front of the customers, including the pretty woman, and was over nearly as soon as it started.
The woman, whose identity remains a mystery, made another selection. The day went on like any other at the Pinecrest. After the shift was over at 3 p.m., Hashem and Helen sat together at a table near the back of the restaurant with Foundas' daughter and two sisters. They laughed and chatted and visited for a few minutes, until Helen left for home, and the table broke up.
Helen Menicou was not quite 20 years old when she first came to San Francisco from Cyprus with her husband, Peter. It was 1969, and they were newlyweds. Peter, 16 years her senior, had come here in 1952 to attend UC Berkeley. He went home, met the woman of his dreams, promptly married her, and brought her back to the Bay Area.
It was a very American immigrant story. Their oldest son, Nikos, was born in 1970. Another son, Andrew, was born in 1972. Peter worked as a biochemist at UCSF, and Helen stayed home with their sons until 1977. By then, both children were in school. Helen wanted to work, but only the day shift, so she could be home when her children got there after school.
In the early days, the Menicous lived in an apartment in the Mission District; sometimes life there was rough. Peter remembers stepping out the front door to go to work one day and winding up in a tussle with two vagrants who frequented the stoop. Just as Peter landed them both in headlocks, Helen handed her baby to a neighbor, took off her shoe, and began bopping each on the head with it. The vagrants soon left.
